Category Archives: Blogging

As a novelist, says Anna Burns, her job is “to show up and be present and attend. It’s a waiting process.” She “just had to wait for my characters to tell me their stories.”(Interview by Alison Flood in The Guardian, 16 Oct ’18)

This obviously worked for Anna Burns as she has just bagged the Booker Prize with her novel Milkman.

I, however, have spent a lifetime waiting for characters to turn up and write themselves into a book but they haven’t done so yet and I’m rather starting to fear they never will. I go to bed having put out my finest stationery but masterpieces come there none. Not so much as a shopping list; not so much as a tweet. Perhaps the characters have used up all their best ideas writing other people’s books. They have no more twists.

It’s March the first, hey nonny no, and my muse, like my garden, is frozen.

I made a bash this morning at a blog on the theme of snowy days in school which inched towards the spell-binding conclusion that children like snow and cleaners don’t. So if today is cold and miserable, well – at least I spared you that.

So I’m going to palm you off with some pictures of our most recent visitor. Stay warm, stay safe; speak soon.

“The thing is, before I retired, I used to rush around on a Sunday trying to get everything done. But I’m finding now that I say ‘I’ll do this, that and the other tomorrow’ and do something else instead. Then whatever it was never gets done. Do you find that?”

“So there we were, scrabbling around on the cell floor in front of the Naked Rambler, trying to pick up the papers and desperately trying not to look up and not to laugh…”

It broadens the mind does travel, and going away last weekend to celebrate a school-friend’s sixtieth brought us into contact with interesting people who had interesting stories to tell and different – shall we say – viewpoints.

What am I like? Here am I inviting you… nay, begging you …. to read my blogs – hundreds of the little blighters – (the early ones are the best: less parentheses) and not once have I given a moment’s thought to your safety whilst doing so. Not a glimmer of a risk assessment has crossed my mind.

Yet, while immersed in the Jelly Chronicles (I have a particular fondness for number four), you might be putting yourself in all sorts of dangers. Heavens, your solicitor could, at this very moment, be preparing a claim for damages! I must remedy this remissness without delay.

“But you’ve been selling me a National Express ticket to Birmingham every weekend for months! Why not now?”

Mrs Travel-Centre is of a certain age and traditional build. Well, that’s not exactly how YoungLochinvar later describes her, but then he was speaking with the brutality of youth: a youth, moreover, already cutting it fine to get his coach to Birmingham.

I am at the gym (thanks for all the helpful hints – so far, so good), face to face with a jolly woman, probably in her mid-sixties. Though she might be ninety-eight but really, really benefiting from regular work-outs. She does look familiar but I can’t quite place her. I’m vaguely thinking Jacob’s nan; Jacob, whose suggestion for a word containing the ‘ee’ sound was “weed – like what you smoke.” Maybe, maybe not…

Ann from next door and I were chatting yesterday whilst sweeping leaves off the pavement. Ann has an uncle – we’ll call him Pat – in his mid-nineties. He’s been married for forty-seven years to his second wife. Let’s call her Jess. She’s about ten years younger than Uncle Pat, so mid-eighties. There are two sons, both abroad.

Stop there. Your name is not Mary; you are not calling from Microsoft – go and get a proper job. I’m busy. Goodbye.

Stop there, person that is almost certainly not called Peter. At what stage in your life did you decide to become a crook? Suppose it was your grandmother who had picked up this phone and was even now installing your evil malware? Now, I’m very busy – I need to get to the shops – go and rethink your life choices.

I know, I know. You were about to give my place on the register to someone else. I do realise that that there’s a waiting list of other things wanting your attention. What can I say? Don’t give up on me – one more chance?

Truth is, we’ve marked the New Year by getting well and truly laminated. So the time I should have spent blogging has been frittered away juggling saws: in particular, Bro-in-Law’s mitre saw, Pa’s jig-saw and LittleBruv’s useful oscillating saw – ideal for cutting the bottom off architraves, should that be your heart’s desire.